Category Archives: Media Criticism

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Social Commentary

The “Inadvertent” Editing At NBC

2 Comments

I have some thoughts on NBC’s bias, and media bias in general, over at PJMedia.

[Update a while later]

Similar thoughts over at Breitbart.com.

[Update early afternoon]

Matt Welch: When losers write history.

[Update later in the afternoon]

A commenter at my PJMedia piece has recreated the editing process:

Original quote as heard on the 911 tapes:

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking about.
911 DISPATCHER: Okay, is this guy, is he white, black, or Hispanic?
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

I guess some unknown NBC ‘senior producer’ was told the quote was too long to include in the broadcast segment and it needed to be cut to no longer than 5 seconds in order to fit time constraints.

First Round: Obviously the first thing to do when trimming a Zimmerman quote to fit the time allotted is to cut out anything that wasn’t said by Zimmerman;

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining, and he’s just walking around, looking about.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Nope, it’s still too long, we need to cut more.

Second Round, of course, reprising the weather report for that night is Sanford Florida is unnecessary and might be confusing to viewers who don’t live in Central Florida.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something. He’s just walking around, looking about.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Still too long, we obviously need to cut more.

Third round: We take out the passive ‘stage direction’ parts of Zimmerman’s dialog that really don’t contribute to the action that we need to hold viewer’s attention.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or he’s on drugs or something.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Fourth round: It’s closer but the quote is still a little too long to fit into the time slot.

Now Legal gets into the act and tells the editor that an on the air accusation that someone might be on drugs, even in a quote from a third party, might expose the station to a defamation lawsuit and they want the offending words removed .

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, or something.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Fifth round: Now we’re almost there; just a couple of more words to trim and the quote will fit into the 5 second window allotted.

Running the remaining text through the NBC Writers Style Guide shows that without the ‘on drugs’ direct action object that Legal had removed, the words ‘or something’ are duplicative and softens the narrative line established by ‘up to no good’ action group and weakens the emotional impact of the entire quote.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good.
ZIMMERMAN: He looks black.

Sixth Round: Now we’ve almost got it. All we need to do now is take out the dead air blank caused by removing the Dispatchers unnecessary comments from the quote and we’ve got our 5 second quote.

ZIMMERMAN: This guy looks like he’s up to no good, he looks black.
Yeah!! We did it and we only had to go to Legal Once@!!

/sarc off

The frightening thing is, it’s entirely plausible.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

EditGate

12 Comments

Was worse than Rathergate™:

The media dishonestly going after the president of the United States is wrong, but it goes with the territory, and the target in that case is the most powerful man in the world. That is something completely different from the media using lies and half-baked information to label as racist and a liar a private citizen while he’s in hiding for fear of his life.

Of course, the partisan hacks who did this probably don’t think there was anything wrong with Rathergate™, other than he got caught.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary, War Commentary

A Nice Passover Gift For American Jews

14 Comments

Release the Khalidi tape:

Interestingly, that sole Obama remark, as reported by Wallsten, contains an ellipsis in the middle. After the then-state senator says the Khalidis had given him “consistent reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases” comes a strategically placed dot-dot-dot. We don’t know what those blind spots and biases were and what he might have thought of them. Or how he might have changed. That, in Wallsten’s or some Times editors’ judgment, was best left on the tape.

So what are we to think? We have an administration that not only ascribes most of the Middle East blame to Israel, but also has banned “Islamism” and all related words, even “Islam” and “jihad,” from our national security documents. They’re completely gone. Indeed, even the Fort Hood massacre, so clearly inspired by Islamic extremism, has now been shifted into the comfortable category of the lone, angry killer.

It’s interesting to compare this to NBC’s recent journalistic malpractice, in which they elided some words in the middle of a quote to create the false narrative that George Zimmerman was motivated by race in his suspicion of Trayvon Martin. Except in this case, it’s the reverse — to remove potentially damaging comments to show that the president is an “unbiased” “moderate.”

What, indeed, is the LA Times hiding? If they are unwilling to show the tape, they could at least provide the complete quote. They haven’t claimed that a promise to a source prevents them from doing so, though now that I’ve made the request, perhaps that will be their next excuse. At which point, we can safely consign them to the same ill repute in which NBC should reside, even if it does not in the minds of its fellow “journalists.”

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

It’s Not The Constitution, Stupid

2 Comments

It’s about raw political power:

That’s what it’s about. The president and his followers want to be able to labor on our behalf, and to make all of our important decisions. Many of them, like their European counterparts, firmly believe this is the best way to achieve the common good. Others are driven by disgust with contemporary America and the American people, and see themselves acting to save the world from our own worst instincts and impulses. Still others are elitists who despise the common people, who are so plainly unworthy of respect. Whatever the motivation, the “solution” is to restrict the freedom of Americans in order that the superior beings who currently control the executive branch can dictate policy.

Well, if “labor on our behalf” means lots of golf and expensive vacations, mostly at taxpayer expense.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space

Republican Space Socialists

8 Comments

Gene Kaprowski from the Daily Caller interviewed me on Monday afternoon. This is the result.

[Update a few minutes later]

It’s both amusing and depressing to read through the post comments, and note that absolutely none of them have anything to do with space. It’s all about the election and the Tea Party. This doesn’t bode well for having a space-policy discussion this year.

Media Criticism, Political Commentary

The Constitutional Law Professor

6 Comments

…doubles down on his ignorance of history and the Constitution.

Gosh, I’m starting to think that this guy may not be the brilliant lightworker we were told he was four years ago. You’d think that at some point his defenders would get tired of trying to defend him. But I expect them to double down, too.

[Update a few minutes later]

A lot more related links from Instapundit.

[Wednesday morning update]

The man who knew too little.